


A man is no island

by Karottenbackcreme



Category: Better Call Saul (TV), Breaking Bad
Genre: Angst, Drama, Drug Use, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Eventual Romance, F/M, Family Drama, Father Figures, Father/Daughter Dynamics, Gene Takavic, Heavy Angst, Homelessness, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Jesse Pinkman - Freeform, Jimmy McGill - Freeform, Major Original Character(s), Minor Original Character(s), Murder, Original Character(s), Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Physical Abuse, Psychological Drama, Psychological Trauma, Rape Recovery, Saul Goodman - Freeform, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-08-01 16:21:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16287872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Karottenbackcreme/pseuds/Karottenbackcreme
Summary: „Saul Goodman had always been in love with life itself. [...]Jimmy McGill had been in love with many things. [...]However, Gene Takavic wasn’t sure there was anything that he had loved about his life for the past two years. Instead, he had been pretty sure there was nothing left for him to love, and that he hated most of what his miserable life had become.“





	1. Prologue

Saul Goodman had always been in love with life itself.

He had loved to be a lawyer. He had loved his secretary Francesca, – even though she surely didn’t love him back one bit, – he had loved her sassy comments and witty comebacks to his cheesy pick-up lines. He loved the ridiculous stories people told him, the crazy things that happened to him every day. And he almost loved helping people fighting for their rights as much as he loved the money that ended up in his pockets in conclusion. Because, well, he _did_ love the money; Earning and spending it equally.

He also loved the drugs that he could buy with that money; Alcohol, Marijuana, Cocaine. He loved the fuzzy, light feeling that started in his stomach and slowly made it’s way through his body, casting out all the thoughts on his mind, until it was the only thing left for him to feel.

He loved to travel, from Las Vegas to Cape Town; Saul Goodman had seen it all. He loved good food, fine women, fast cars, rock music and old movies. He loved to laugh as much as he loved to fight, because nothing was better than a bit of a challenge to his persuasion skills. He loved the sound of his own voice, what he saw when he looked in the mirror, the bright colors of his suits and hell, he even liked his own cock.

All things considered, Saul Goodman had been living a good and fulfilling life. But all of that was irrelevant, didn’t matter, because Saul Goodman died in 2010, and nobody cared for what dead people had loved about their life anyway.

 

James McGill had been in love with many things.

He had been in love with Kimberly Wexler, had loved his good friend Marco and he had once loved his older brother.

He had loved the small room in the back of the _Day Spa_ _&  _ _Nail,_ in which he had moved after his divorce, as much as he hated it at the same time. He loved Ms. Nguyen and her employees as much as they annoyed him, and he loved how much he hated Howard Hamlin. And to be honest, he also loved his shabby, old, yellow car with it’s one, goddamn red door.

He had loved the thought of being the good, responsible man. Loved the dream of achieving something, being someone that others could be proud of. But boy, he was just never supposed to be that man.

Even though Jimmy’s life was far from perfect, it still was _something_ and he was genuinely happy with it. But all of that was irrelevant, didn’t matter, because when Chuck took his own life back in 2003, James McGill died with him.

 

However, Gene Takavic wasn’t sure there was anything that he had loved about his life for the past two years.  Instead, he had been pretty sure there was nothing left for him to love, and that he hated most of what his miserable life had become.

He hated the horrible mustache he was wearing now. He hated the stupid corporation he worked for. Hated his district manager, with his fake ass smile that showed way too much teeth and his ugly and poorly made wig, which looked like it would come to life every second and infect everyone in the whole mall with rabies. He hated his co-workers, from the seventeen-year-old boy that was always late, had eyes red as rubies, repulsively sweaty hands and a mouth dry as sandpaper, to the single mother with the bloodcurdling voice and her way too high and earsplitting loud laughter.

He hated the superficial teenage girls he worked for, the disgusted faces they made when he looked at them for too long. He hated their like cool water smelling boyfriends, that gave him that specific kind of look, as if they wanted to say that he was a repugnant old perv. He may have never been the kind of man you would have called a fighter, but the urge he had to make these scrawny boys see stars sometimes almost made him lose his mind.

He hated the too big and horribly empty house he lived in, aswell as the fact that it was always so quiet that he could hear a pin falling to the ground. And he _definitely, absolutely_ and _completely_ hated the smell of cinnamon.

He had maybe liked his own cock once, but now, he couldn’t even see it anymore when he was looking down at his naked body. Hidden by the mass of aged, sagging and flabby meat and skin which had been his stomach once, he didn’t even like to watch himself in the mirror anymore. His wardrobe was missing the colorful suits too, fuck, he didn’t even own a suit now. He hated the ridiculous hats that he had to wear to work. But the thing that he despised the most about what his life had become, was how pathetic he felt every day.

People treated Gene differently than they had treated Jimmy or Saul. Young and self assured, full of want, dreams and determination, it was almost impossible to overlook them. Though they had always been on the run, not even exactly knowing what they were running away from, – _maybe from himself, maybe from all the things he tried to be but never could achieve,_ – Jimmy and Saul had always stood their ground. Maybe life hadn’t always been easy on them, but maybe that was good and had made them into the men that they were, and giving up had simply never been an option. And even though Gene was old and tired now, having given up on himself such a long time ago, with a broken spine and a tight noose already hanging around his neck, he still couldn’t stop running. Being nothing but a mere mask of what he once had been, unrecognizable to even himself.

Gene sometimes wondered what was more pathetic; That his life had become like this in the first place, just because he was too scared to face the consequences of the things he had done, or himself sitting in his moldy armchair, watching old Saul Goodman commercials and pretending that he still was the same man.

But all of that was irrelevant, didn’t matter, because Gene Takavic was still alive and nobody cared for that anyway.

 

* * *

 

 

**November 2012: Omaha, Nebraska**

 

The young girl had caught Gene’s attention about two weeks ago.

He had seen a lot of homeless people in his life before, back in Cicero, Chicago and Albuquerque. He had seen so many of them that, normally, Gene wouldn’t spend more than a second of thought on them. But still, it was different when the homeless person was an obviously teen aged girl.

The first time he saw her, it was early in the morning and the sun was still hiding behind the thick patch of clouds in the sky, and he was just on his way to work. She was leaning against the wall next to the entrance, her eyes closed and sleeping peacefully. It had been a terrific winter that year and it was freezing cold the last night, and by the thin layer of slippery ice on the streets, he had figured that she had probably taken shelter from the snow under the roof of the mall.

Even with her dark blue woolen cap pulled deep down over her face and the thick grey scarf around her neck, she looked incredibly young. Her yellow raincoat was dirty and had holes in it, her pants and shoes looked worn and way too big for her, and she clutched to the black backpack in her hands like her life depended on it. Well, it probably did.

Gene had felt sad for her for a moment, but then quickly decided not to waste any more time or energy in thinking about her – who she was, or how she had ended up here, – since it would do neither of them any good, and opened the door to the mall with one of his keys. When he took his lunch break that day and went outside to have a smoke, he watched as the manager of the mall – a mean, obese old man with a round and sweaty face – woke the young girl up and chased her away with a fucking rifle.

 _The perks of living in Nebraska_ , he thought and after that, he was pretty sure that would’ve been the last time for him to see the girl. But as it turned out he was wrong, so much more wrong than he knew back then, and the girl was way more persistent than he had thought.

When he got to work the next day, he caught himself smiling as he saw the girl on the same spot he had seen her yesterday. Still sleeping and holding her backpack in her arms. It was no surprise to him when the mall manager threatened her with his rifle again, and it was an even smaller surprise when he still found her sleeping under the roof the next day.

Gene had watched the young girl for the past two weeks and he had to admit, he somehow developed a growing respect for her. He soon found out how the girl made a living, except for the empty cup in front of her, in which a friendly pedestrian would sometimes put a dollar or two. He had watched her stealing from people, pulling their wallets out of their pockets unnoticed. He had watched her studying people, waiting for the careless ones, that would leave their cars open and unattended for a moment, so she could slip food or fresh clothes out of their trunks. Once he had even caught her stealing food in the grocery store next to the _Cinnabon_ he worked at, and as she left the shop with full pockets, he had quietly chuckled to himself. He didn’t even know exactly why, but somehow he had felt strangely proud.

She was a pretty good thief, he had to give her that, and he had never seen her make any mistake, until he went to work on that particular day. He had left his house early, because he didn’t sleep well that night and was already in the shower way before his alarm should have ringed. Since he was that early, he still had the time to get himself a coffee and to unhurriedly smoke a cigarette. So he stood there, coffee in his right, cigarette in his left hand, as he watched the girl once again.

One of the cleaning men had just left the building and made his way past her. His orange overall was over sized and baggy, and out of the pocket on his backside peaked a clearly visible, dark brown wallet. Even he thought for a moment that the man was asking for it to be stolen.

He wasn’t sure why she didn’t manage to do it right this time, maybe it was because she had just woken up and was still dizzy from sleep, or maybe it was because it got colder every day and her fingers had started to feel numb. But just as she was about to slip her hand in his pocket, his wallet fell to the ground.

The girl was already on her feet within mere seconds, her backpack over her shoulders, as she tried to run away. But before she got the chance to flee, the man had already grabbed her by her backpack and hurled her back on the icy streets.

»What the fuck do you think you’re doing?«, the young man snapped at her so loudly, Gene could make out every word that he had said.

Maybe it was her misfortune or his luck that it was still so early in the day. Because if more people would have been around the parking lot at that time, he figured that the man probably wouldn’t have made such a scene. He took a few steps towards them and tried not to eavesdrop too obviously, while taking a sip of his coffee and a pull of his cigarette.

The girl kept a straight face and responded with a calm voice. »I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.«

She maybe was a good liar, with keeping a straight face like that, but the situation was pretty clear, and he didn’t think she was able to talk her way out of that.

»You don’t know shit?«, the man shook his head in disbelief, as the situation went on just like Gene had expected. »Then my wallet fell out of my pocket all by itself, huh?«

The girl collected herself from the ground and leaned against the wall. It seemed as if she was rolling her eyes at him. »Yup, seems like it. Maybe it grew a pair of wings or something, I dunno.«

For a short while, the man only glared at her. But then, he pulled his phone out of his pocket. »You know what? If that’s so, I’m just gonna call the cops.«

The eyes of the girl widened so much, Gene thought they were going to fall out of her head. There was no sign of the cockiness she had expressed only seconds before. »No! Don’t do that, okay? Like I already said, I didn’t do anything, and your wallet’s right here, so please, don’t call the cops and just let me go?«

It didn’t look like the man was going to just give up, as he was already dialing numbers.

»Hey, come on, don’t do that!«, the girl pleaded again.

»Shut the fuck up!«, the man answered angrily.

As he put the phone to his head, the girl seemed to get more and more jumpy. She looked around the parking lot nervously, twisting and shifting from one foot to another. Wearing the kind of expression on her face which he had already known from himself. The look of a hunted animal, that had been chased into a corner and that now desperately tried to find a way out. He could still remember the times when he had looked at Chuck like that.

And the girl did just what you’d expect a hunted animal to do. He was pretty sure that he could tell the exact moment the idea came to her mind. She took a deep breath, then straightened her back and allowed her backpack to slide down her shoulders, catching the handle of it in one of her hands. He watched her take another deep breath and closing her eyes before taking a swing, hitting the guy over his head with her bag.

The loud scream he let out sounded much more angry than hurt, but the action had caught him by surprise and he let go of his phone, making it fall to the ground. The girl tried her best to get away from him this time, but once again she was too slow or the man too fast, because he caught her by the hair, pulling the woolen hat off her head in conclusion, and pressed her back against the wall with one brutal motion.

»Are you fucking serious?«, he shouted in her face. »First you try to steal from me, now you try to run away a second time?«

She looked him in the eye and wasn’t able to keep her temper this time. »You know what? I’m sick of this bullshit. Screw you, dickhead.«

The crushing noise that the man’s hand had made as it her face sounded so disgusting, it teared through his skin and bones. It had caught Gene so much by surprise, he let his cigarette fall in the snow.

The girl stared at the man, while a thin trickle of blood flowed from her nose over her lips, and whispered so quietly Gene almost couldn’t make it out. »Fuck you«

He could see the growing anger in the young man’s eyes, glowing and burning as if he wanted to set her on fire, and just as Gene thought he was going to explode any minute and beat the living shit out of her, the girl looked away from the man. She watched him instead, locking her eyes with him, in a silent question. He hadn’t even known that she had noticed him standing there. It felt as if is heart was missing a beat and Gene turned away immediately,  startled, like a twelve-year-old boy in love.

His feet moved without him telling them to do so and he walked towards the entrance of the mall. Just as he had put his key inside of the lock, he couldn’t stop himself from turning around another time to watch them. The man now had a hold of the young girl’s throat and looked as if he was squeezing it, and once again, Gene’s feet moved without his permission. He directly walked towards the two of them and then _slipped._

He did it just right, because he got a hold of the young man’s jacket in front of him and pulled him to the ground with him in conclusion. He was definitely too old to do shit like that, because now his back hurt more than it had ever done before, and he felt like he would never be able to walk again. Still, he prepared his best imitation of an old, hurt man, and spoke.

»Oh my god! Jesus, I’m so sorry, son. I’m just so clumsy, must have slipped on the ice…«

The young man looked incredibly confused, his head moving from one side to the other, trying to process what just happened and probably, to look for the girl.

»… I’m always falling, boy, I tell you that. Since my Nancy’s gone, – God be merciful to her precious soul, – I have my head in the clouds. She always told me to look where to go, you know, son?«, Gene finished his speech and started to raise himself of the ground slowly.

As both of the men were standing straight again, the girl was long gone. And the young man’s wallet too.


	2. Another Beginning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there,
> 
> first of all I wanted to thank everyone reading this story! 
> 
> Second, I want to point out that this chapter has - for reasons I don't know - some formatting errors. As you can see, there are spaces inserted in multiple paragraphs where they don't belong. Whenever I tried to fix these issues by editing the chapter, they seem to have disappeared in the editor version but continued to remain in the web version.
> 
> I currently don't know what I did wrong and I tried to fix the issue unsuccesfuly for the last three days, so if anyone knows or has an idea what to do about it, you are welcome to let me know so.
> 
> But anyway, I hope you like the chapter after all and a have a fun reading experience!
> 
> Thank you once again and have a brilliant day.
> 
> EDIT - 05. 02. 19: The issues should be fixed now.

**November 2012: Omaha, Nebraska**

  
Since he had taken the fall for her Gene hadn’t seen the girl again, and he had almost forgotten all about her. Another two weeks and a sprained tailbone later though, it seemed as if the universe had decided for them to meet again in an abstruse turn of events.

The snow that had fallen onto Gene’s head started to melt and now soaked through his hair, making single droplets of water falling out of it and drip on his face. The sun had long disappeared from the sky and the cold blowing wind was biting through his thick winter coat. He looked at the ground as he was making his way back to his house after a long evening shift at the _Cinnabon_ , watched the footsteps he was leaving behind in the freshly fallen snow. His house was located in the outer part of the city, almost hidden between the many side streets and small alleys which surrounded it.

At this time of the day, – or maybe more fitting, at this time of the night, – the streets were usually quite except for the wind howling in his ears. So for a moment, Gene thought that he had imagined it; The throaty, breaking sound that somehow sounded like a pathetic little whimper.

He stopped in the middle of his tracks, trying to concentrate on where the noise had come from. A minute or so had passed, and just as he was about to give up and continue walking, he heard the noise again. Now, he was able to locate it’s source coming from the little alley on his left. Slowly, he made a few steps towards it. It was incredibly dark and his eyesight had gotten even worse over the years, but still with only moonlight and the dim light of the street lanterns illuminating the alley, he was able to recognize the girl’s dirty and old, yellow raincoat.

She was pressed with her back against the wall by a figure he couldn’t make out, but he could clearly hear the muffled noises she was making, high pitched and sounding pretty angry. He had figured that the person standing in front of her had put their hands over her mouth to stop the sounds from coming out.

»Bonnie, Darling, is that you? Are you here?«, he heard himself ask into the darkness, directed towards the smudge in front of him. His voice seemed to echo through the streets.

For a moment, the noises had silenced completely and Gene could feel his heart drop. Suddenly, something in the darkness started to rustle and then the noises started again, but this time way louder and much more aggressive sounding. It made him feel strangely encouraged and so he started to get closer to the figures.

»I thought I told you not to wander off too far.«, Gene continued, slowly placing one foot before the other. »Come on Sweetie, I need help carrying all those groceries, you know that.«

The rustling got louder this time and then something happened that he couldn’t see, because he could hear a man scream out in pain before there was a dull sound, like wet clothes hitting the floor, and then footsteps. Fast, hurried footsteps that made their way away from him and out of the alley from the opposite side of where he was standing. Gene continued his way through the alley until he had reached the girl with the yellow raincoat.

He opened his mouth to speak, but when no sound came out, he cleared his throat and tried again. »What happened? Some guy trying to hurt you?«

She only nodded, keeping her eyes closed and trying to steady her breathing.

»Thank you«, the girl then whispered lightly, her voice sounding hoarse and husky. She had lowered her head towards the ground and the corners of her mouth twisted slightly upwards as she continued. »… again, I guess.«

Gene eyed her for a moment, unsure on how to reply at first. But when he did, it was completely sincere. »You don’t have to thank me.«

 The girl looked up at him, with one eyebrow pulled up high in a silent question. _Are you sure?_

»It’s alright, really.«, he insisted.

She started nodding absently, smiling at him in a warm but reserved manner and pushed herself off the ground, away from the wall. Again, the two of them locked eyes, seemingly unsure on what to do now.

As if a cat had caught his tongue, Gene just _stared_ at her, internally cursing himself for not being able to come up with literally _anything_ to say. He felt like the man he had once been was angrily scratching against his skin from the inside, trying to tear his way back to the surface. But still, not one single word was leaving his mouth.

The silence between them had become increasingly awkward. And the girl just stared back at him, but with eyes flickering around nervously while she scratched the back of her head. He had figured out later that she had probably just been too polite to simply leave him standing there.

It was her who had found the ability to speak again first. »I’ll get going now, I guess. Thank you again.« 

She grabbed her backpack off the ground and put it over her shoulders. The girl was already half way out of the alley when he suddenly heard himself call after her. She stopped in the middle of her movement and turned around to look at him, slowly making steps towards him again.

The words spluttered out of his mouth before he even had the slightest chance to think about what he was doing, or about what he actually was proposing to a teen aged girl. »Do you, uh, maybe … want to come … with me?«, he stuttered and surely sounded as weird and dumb as he felt.

» _Why_ ?«, the girl had come to a stand in front of him now and was glaring at him, with sharp eyes that had tightened to thin slits by that time. Her distrust was clearly displayed on her face, and Gene just couldn’t stop wondering what kind of things had happened to her. »Where should _I_ want to go with _you_?«

»Uh, … grab a bite to eat, or something …«, Gene replied and then swallowed hard, but the lump inside of his throat continued to throb. He was overly aware of how creepy he must have sounded to her and so, he quickly added. »You don’t have to, if you don’t want, I mean. It’s just … you look kinda hungry, you know?«

The girl lowered her defenses almost immediately. Though he could still detect her not entirely convinced expression, she relaxed her tensely straightened shoulders again and her face softened just a touch. Now, in the dim light of the alley, she looked even younger than before. Without the woolen hat she had worn the last time he had seen her, he was able to take notice of her messy and dirty, brownish blonde hair. She looked like she hadn’t showered in weeks.

A strong urge to make sure that the girl was looked after suddenly overcame Gene. Maybe it was partly because he recognized himself in her, but maybe it was also purely selfish because he just couldn’t bare the stinging loneliness anymore. Once again, he suggested without even thinking about it. »Afterwards, you can come back to my place too, if you want.«

The girl’s head shot up in such an aggressive motion, he almost heard the vertebrae in her neck snap.

»Shit, no! Ah, Fuck … Please believe me, that sounded _wrong_ , like _really_ , _really_ wrong! Uh, I just mean it’s like … really cold outside and – not trying to insult you, or anything – you honestly … seem like you have nowhere else to go.«, he bubbled, frantic and jittery, and bit his own tongue to stop himself from exposing his own pathetic and embarrassing loneliness.

The girl watched him for a while, with arms crossed in front of her chest and wearing an unreadable expression on her face. Just as he started to feel incredibly nervous beneath her gaze, a slight twitch went trough her face and she uncrossed her arms again.

»Where do you want to take me to eat?«, she asked lowly.

»I think there’s a _Runza_ around the corner that’s still open?«, he offered, after a relieved sigh had found it’s way out of his mouth.

The girl continued to eye him, trying to keep her neutral expression, but the slight twitching in the corners of her mouth gave her away. »And you’re going to pay?«

He actually had to laugh about that. »Of course«

This time, the corners of her mouth didn’t only twitch, but instead she allowed herself to actually smile at him. »Alright, come on, let’s go then. I’m hungry.«

 He was a bit struck and felt equally confused when she started to walk out of the alley, seemingly expecting him to follow. When he didn’t, she called for him, without turning around to look at him. »You’re coming, or what?«

»Ya, sure, just ... «, he replied, while he was trying to catch up with her fast steps. »Just, one more thing … What’s your name?«

Suddenly, the girl stopped and turned around to look at him. She looked at him for such a long time, that for a moment, he thought that he had said something terribly wrong. But then, the girl started to smile, a wicked, sly little smile, that didn’t reach her eyes at all.

»Grace«, she almost whispered.

»Nice to meet you, Grace. I’m Gene.«

 

* * *

 

 

**December 2017: Sitka, Alaska**

 

Mrs. Locklear watched through her bedroom window as her tenant entered his little flat beneath her own in the middle of the night.

Something about the young man had always made her feel slightly at unease.

Maybe it was his restless and fidgety nature, the fact that he either couldn't stop moving while violently scratching his arms and biting his lips until he bled, or that he sometimes sat still and quite for minutes or even hours; At some point, Mrs. Locklear had even caught him blankly staring at the door to his flat for two whole hours without even moving once.

Maybe it was that he either stayed out all night and only came back home at horrendous hours, or that he else kept her awake at night with his night terrors and his terrifying screams that chilled her down to the bone.

Maybe it was the way he always seemed to look for shadows in every corner.

Maybe it were the dark scars on his face, that only seemed to reflect even brighter on the pale color of his skin.

Or maybe, it were his haunted eyes which made him look as if, at some point, something inside of him had just _cracked_ .

But probably, it was a combination of all the above.

 

His name was Adrian Reed, he was a young fisherman and he had moved to Sitka about six years ago. From Phoenix as he claimed, but he didn't sound as if he were from Arizona at all. To be honest, normally, Mrs. Locklear wouldn’t even had taken him in. But since the death of her husband after a long and terrific fight against cancer, her savings had drawn to a close and she had desperately been in need for the money. One week after she had put the advert for the empty flat in the newspaper, the young man had showed up in front of her doorstep.

Mrs. Locklear had been suspicious towards him from the beginning, but he had seemed as if he had nowhere else to go, and he, at least, always paid his rent on time.

 He always wore a black woolen cap pulled down deep over his forehead, concealing the shaved down, short hair on his head. His beard looked scruffy and somehow shabby, but Mrs. Locklear had soon figured that it was only another attempt of him to try and keep up a facade, to hide himself away from the world. Just like his clothes, always in dark colors and a slightly too big size, as if he tried to make himself seem stronger and bigger than he actually was.

 Mrs. Locklear watched the young man open up the front door to the house with an unpleasant, screeching noise – the door had made that sound for _years_ , but the amount of money she would have to pay to get it switched out was nothing but _absurd_ – and slip inside. Even from where she was standing, the rings around his eyes looked a lot darker than usually.

As she heard the locks of the door click in the flat beneath her, Mrs. Locklear absently wondered if he would wake her up with his screams that night too.

 

 

* * *

 

The hot water burned on his body, fizzling against his nerve-ends, and he was almost sure that his skin would start to blister if he only turned the water just _a little bit_ hotter. But with hot steam filling his nose and a burning sensation that hurt _everywhere_ , he felt just a little more at ease, maybe almost a little bit free. Like he was _finally_ able to breathe.

When he closed his eyes then, for a moment, there was no guilt. No nice memories that made his stomach convulse because he didn’t deserve to remember them. No people from his past that seemed to follow him wherever he went, haunting him like ghosts inside of his own mind. Instead, there was only _pain_. Beautiful, mesmerizing pain, freeing himself of every thought inside. 

 Whenever he exited the shower, his pale skin had turned into a bright pink color, sometimes even slightly red, and today was no different. He pressed his fingers against the reddened skin of his chest, for a moment a tiny wince getting caught inside of his throat, and watched with awe how, afterwards, the white marks on his body slowly started to turn pink again.

He dried off his body and put his clothes on without looking in the mirror once; He already knew that wouldn’t like what he was seeing anyway, the version of himself that felt like nothing else but mockery to him. When he was done, he opened his bathroom door and stepped inside his bedroom.

 He had wondered more than once what would happen if they finally caught up to him. Often, he asked himself what would be worse. Continuing with his life like this, scared to death even by his own shadow on the wall, always worrying that there might be someone out there to get him, like a thick scar burned into the back of his mind. Or the police finding him and locking him up, forbidding him from ever feeling free again. On the contrary he had to admit, he couldn’t really remember when he had truly felt free for the last time.

So when he noticed the human shaped figure sitting on his bed, his first instinct had been to run. But he could immediately feel the blood freeze inside of his veins, making his whole body shiver involuntarily. He stared at her with eyes ripped wide open, his chest way too tight to breathe, as the panic overpowered him and paralyzed every muscle inside of his body. His back made a dull noise as he bumped back against the door, making the person in front of him lift their head in conclusion.

And even though the female sitting on his bed had a petite, tiny frame, was maybe around four inches smaller than him, with light auburn, almost reddish hair and dark brown eyes, to him, she was absolutely and completely terrifying.

His eyes hastily drifted from her to the door of his living room and back again to the opened window next to his bed. The wind was freezing cold and howling loudly on the outside, and it only made him shiver even more. He couldn’t remember opening that window, in fact he was absolutely sure that he had closed it, because he always checked at least twice before leaving a room. A nagging feeling started to creep up on him, as he figured that it was probably the woman who had opened the window to get inside of his flat.

 »Jesse Pinkman?«, she spoke soft and sympathetically, but it sounded almost exactly like the demons that haunted him.

»It’s really you … Isn’t it?«, she looked up at him as if he wasn’t real, as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

He had subconsciously sneaked even closer to the bathroom door than before and now hit his head on it. He winced and blinked shortly, then, for a moment, he opened his mouth as if to say something, but instead clamped his jaws shut again and gritted his teeth. He was still shivering.

 The young woman looked at the ground for a second and swallowed. She put a loose streak of hair behind her ear, before crossing her arms and looking up at him again. »I’m sorry for breaking in, I really am, but I just _had_ to find you.«

»What do you want?«, the words left his mouth like a croak and his voice was shaking. In his mind, he tried to burn holes inside of her with his gaze.

 Again, the woman looked down at the ground. When she answered him this time, it was with a soft and low voice. »I don’t want to hurt you, I promise. Rather the opposite, in fact. I want to help you.«

That immediately made him feel suspicious. He tried to back away a little bit more, but quickly realized that he was already pressing himself against the hard wood of the door. He briefly wondered if the woman could hear his heart beat as loud and aggressive as he could hear it himself.

And it seemed as if she did take notice, because she grabbed her arms tighter with her hands and quickly added. »A friend sent me.«

 »I don’t have any friends.«, he spat out and sounded much more like a defiant teenager than he liked to admit.

»Well, maybe you don’t now, but you definitely did once. Or else I wouldn’t be here.«, the woman replied and continued after she had seen his unconvinced expression. »I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you any names.«

»Just go away«, he growled at her and sounded just as sharp and dismissive as intended.

She answered without looking at him, instead opening her bag and seeming to look around for something inside. »I can’t.«

 As she had found what she was looking for, she made a few steps towards him and held the items in her hand out for him. They were two pictures, and as soon as he had taken them from her and got a look at them, his face twisted into a grotesque grimace.

He could hear the woman talk to him in the back of his head, but none of her words really reached him. The only thing that reached him were the horrific images displayed on the pictures.

He had immediately recognized the dark green armchair in the middle of the first picture. He could still remember how the fabric had felt beneath the tips of his fingers, the texture of the rough tweed which had always been strangely repulsing to him. Could still remember how he had used it as basic element for building his many pillow castles, back then when he was still a child. He couldn’t remember the dried in, dark red blood stains on it, though.

The man’s eyes were ripped wide open, the expression on his face fearful and agonized. And as his own eyes wandered down furthermore on the picture, he quickly realized why the man looked like he did. The sleeves of his dress shirt had been pulled up to his elbows, exposing the bloody and mutilated arms beneath, wearing countless cuts and burns on them and even missing pieces of skin, some still half attached to his body.

In contrast to the disgusting wounds displayed on the picture, the single gunshot wound in the middle of his father’s forehead almost seemed somehow innocent.

In the second picture, he recognized his mother who had been sprawled out on the kitchen table. Her throat was cut from one side to the other, a thick pool of blood gathering beneath her lifeless body.

 He looked up from the pictures and locked eyes with the woman, interrupting her in the middle of whatever she was saying. There was only on thing left for him that he truly cared about. »Is my brother alright?«

For a moment, she wore something that looked like pity in her eyes, and it almost made him as furious as the apologetic tone in her voice did. »I’m so sorry, I don’t know.«

 He felt himself slide down against the door with his back, still desperately clutching to the pictures in his hands, crumpling them up between his fingers. As he sensed the single, hot tears dripping down on his cheeks, he put his arms in front of his eyes to hide himself away from the stranger. 

Maybe, he figured, he had already lost his mind a long time ago and all of this was only happening inside of his head. Maybe he was already sitting inside of a loony bin, rocking his body back and forth in a fetal position, whimpering and muttering to himself. Or maybe, he was even already dead and this was his own personal hell, a sick joke that god played on him, getting revenge for all the terrible things he had done while still alive. But no matter, because it all seemed more plausible and realistic to him than the option that this surreal and absurd situation was actually real, and happening right now.

 He didn’t know for how long he was sitting there, – his sense of time had suffered immensely since he had been held captive – bracing himself with his arms on his legs and his hands concealing his face, but the woman put an end to it when she started to speak with a determinant and clear voice. »We have to leave Sitka tonight.«

»How can I trust you after what you just showed me?«, he asked after lifting his head to look at her again.

 The woman had opened his closet and started to rummage around it’s insides. She pulled out a backpack and started to shove some of his clothes inside of it. He was too tired to even feel offended by it.

»Well, I guess you can’t.«, her response was short and somehow apathetic, she sounded absent-minded, as if she was already a few steps further in her head.

 To his surprise, he didn’t feel scared or panicked anymore. Instead an empty feeling of nothingness had settled inside his bones, inside of his stomach. He wasn’t sure if that wasn’t worse. The shivering had stopped too.

Jesse watched as she put a tube of toothpaste inside of his bag and furrowed his brows. » _Who_ _are_ _you_?«

She only turned her head slightly and looked at him over her shoulder, lips twisting into a wicked, sly little smile that didn’t reach her eyes at all. »You can call me Ash.«


End file.
